gement | Reading

All three times I've gone to Midwest Furfest, there's been a guy standing on the corner outside the venue. He's got tactical gear and a bunch of far-right flags and insignia (but no weapons that I've seen), trying to goad passers-by into starting shit. A few people heckle or argue, but by and large they roll their eyes and get on with the convention.

For at least three years, probably more, this man has made the decision to stand outside all day in Chicago winter just a stone's throw from over ten thousand people having a great time being cringey gay dorks. At any time, he could set down the flags, buy admission, and enjoy the con in good faith. Instead, he chooses over and over to lose the game on turn one.

I admit, I didn't have much exposure to Mr. Kirk's opinions, but I don't think I missed much. Baffling closet cases like Orson Scott Card aside, bigotry just isn't psychologically interesting. But what gets me is the consistency of it, how he made it his job for thirteen years to wake up every day, know the better, and choose the worse.

I have no reason to believe he would have ever changed that, but now that possibility is gone forever. I will grieve that there wasn't more to grieve.

utilitymonstergirl

At time of writing, Silksong releases in about 36 hours. About a week ago I got a gamepad for my computer and, to make sure it worked, gave Hollow Knight another spin. I'm happy to say it does; I beat the main storyline with a moderate amount of side-goal fucking about, and along the way was reminded of how beautifully the game handles atmosphere and storytelling.

Much has been made of Hollow Knight's esoteric Lore, but I'd like to keep it to the things you can observe on a casual playthrough: the very first text in the game is this very Kipling-y poem:

In wilds beyond they speak your name with reverence and regret,
For none could tame our savage souls yet you the challenge met,
Under palest watch, you taught, we changed, base instincts were redeemed,
A world you gave to bug and beast as they had never dreamed.

After a brief tutorial, with message tablets addressed to "higher beings", you open the gate to "the last and only civilization, the eternal Kingdom, Hallownest." The first main area clearly lays out the imperial style: well-paved, industrialized, tasteful blue-gray.

The first boss is a tiny maggot puppeteering a massive suit of armor (hm.) After that, you learn your first spell from a snail shaman whose home is utterly unlike any architecture thus far. In the next area, imperial roads are quickly swallowed up by lush foliage, and tablets are full of wariness and hostility towards the kingdom - this land is under the protection of a different being, Unn.

After fighting one being who resembles you and looting the corpse of another, the game truly opens up. Down below, a warrior clan of mantises still honors their contract with the king, holding the line against deeper horrors. The capital city is still under quarantine, but once you find a way in, the royal splendor makes a strong case for itself. The most fascinating area within it is the Soul Sanctum, a cathedral-laboratory obsessively searching for a cure to the plague. The low-level enemies within it are called Mistakes and Follies, and the boss sits atop a deep pit of civilian corpses swarming with them.

Much later on, near the King's palace at the bottom of the world, you must fight a possessed corpse that resembles yourself. Lower still, past a gate that needs the King's personal seal to open, is a chasm full of many, many more of those corpses and their restless, resentful spirits. They are called Siblings.

God knows that this game does not present a robust theory of political economy, it's a Metroidvania that prioritizes tone and mood. But they clearly put thought into this, the push-and-pull of power centers and resource flows. I look forward to how Silksong evolves this theme, in a living kingdom with a protagonist who can talk.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise posting in

dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

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House of Forgotten Thoughts

(just down the street from Cain and Abel)

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Charlie

Adorable Insect Fascism

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Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

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October 2021

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